Superintendent Mike Miles spent five years as the leader of the Harrison School District in Colorado Springs, Colo., where enjoyed mostly positive coverage of his reform efforts.

In a lengthy 2010 profile in the Colorado Springs Gazette, he was explained this way:

Miles, 53, is a complex man: intense but calm; warrior and poet; a student who went from the parade fields of West Point to the liberal college forums at Berkeley; someone whose favorite movies are “Gladiator” and “The Sound of Music”; a veteran who opposed the war in Iraq; a man who prefers raising up impoverished kids over a glamorous diplomatic job.

Now that it has been nearly a year since Dallas ISD trustees hired Miles, a reader in Colorado Springs wondered how he was doing here.Gazette Columnist Barry Noreen responded, calling his brief tenure "rough sledding" and notes that he has faced public criticism for the salaries he gave top administrators.

The answer is it has been rough sledding for Miles lately. The media and many in the community reacted strongly when he decided to pay his top staffers from $182,000 to $220,000 after he began working as superintendent in July at a salary of $300,000.

The Dallas Morning News reported in December that Miles acknowledged his errors:

“I did a poor job,” he said. “I would have done a better job of salary comparisons first with other big urban districts and things like that, and a better job of communicating salaries. I should have done a better job of looking at those ranges before setting the salaries.”

Miles’ public information officer, who was paid $185,000 and worked for him here, resigned after the controversy. His chief of staff quit in the fall.

Miles also has been publicly criticized by board members Dallas who question his pay-for-performance plan.

Matthew Haag writes about the Dallas Independent School District. Follow @matthewhaag on Twitter, @DallasISD_News on Twitter and the Education Blog on Facebook. Join our ongoing conversation about Dallas ISD at #TalkDISD on the right side of this page.